roycemleev3.50

Breakfast at the retreat had been scheduled for 7:45 am, but I never liked my chances of being up that early, regardless of how late I went to bed the night before. As it turned out, I managed to be up and ready for breakfast by 8:15am - remarkable.

I won't talk too much about today, which was mostly a gab-fest about the future direction of the practice. Some interesting things came out, including the formation of the "coalition of the willing" as an instrument in the management of the office. The fest went for most of the day, before the bus came to take us home at around 4:00pm. I got back to work just before 5:00pm, but managed to overcome the urge to stay back and work and instead decided I would head home to recover.

Today was the day of the Bligh Voller Nield Sydney Office Retreat, which somehow I managed to score an invite to. The plan was that those invited would knock-off work at around 4:00pm before walking to Darling Harbour to board a boat for a Harbour Cruise. Of course, being architects, it was more like 5:00pm before we left the office.

Once we got on the boat, the weather wasn't super and the water (particularly through the heads, was pretty rough. The worst bit was definately when Philip Walker (a colleague) took the wheel. Still, the alcohol and food made it somewhat relaxing. At least right up till we saw the BLOODY GREAT SHARK circling our boat! Fortunately we didn't capsize, we made it to the still waters of Manly in one piece, and made it to our final destination, the Quarrantine Station, pretty much on time.

We all picked our rooms, which had the most remarkable views of Sydney Harbour, before being called for dinner. It was pretty good - much needed after an afternoon of drinking. After dinner we had a trivia competition which got quite rambunctious as people became more and more enebriated. I think I got one question right out of about 40.

Suddenly people started dropping off like flies - mostly senior staff - heading off to bed, many well before midnight. Those left sat out on the deck of the mess and smoked and drank into the wee hours. We talked at length about the good things and bad things about where we worked, and dare I say it, more productively than the official retreat that was happening in the morning.

The hardcore drinkers kept plowing on, getting louder and pissier by the minute. Some of the wildlife popped up to visit, which was extremely cute, right up until a possum bit one of the girls. Not too long after the last of the girls called it quits, leaving the boys to "clean-up" the last of the opened bottles of alcohol. At around 4:00am, the last two men standing, Craig Burns (a wily Scot who han tuck a few whiskeys away) and yours truly decided that we had had about enough, and should probably get some shut-eye. I tucked myself into bed and was asleep within minutes.

Surprisingly I was the last to rise in the morning so our day got off to a slow start. We mucked around a bit on Dave's computer and with his mp3 player before heading off in his schmick maroon Audi A4. He took us on a tour of Duntroon and up Mt Pleasant before we went into Civic for breakky. We were happy for a lazy day, so while Dave put his car in to be cleaned, we had breakky and checked out the shops. Canberra was pretty dead for a Sunday, but I spose it's pretty dead much of the time. Oh, except for Winternats.

We left Dave's soon after lunch (which we again forgot to eat) and made the trip home. We bypassed Goulburn and decided to stop for a late lunch at Marulan, this time enjoying the Colonel's hospitality. BTW, save yourself the disappointment, those KFC mashies are bloody awful!

I had a bit of work I needed to do in the morning so I made a good run at that before Laura and I had to make tracks for Canberra. We were going to visit Laura's brother Dave and his new apartment at Manuka (pronounced mah-nick-ahhh). By early afternoon we were ready to take off so battled a bit of Sydney traffic before trudging off down the M5. What a super road that is! It was better before the onramp to the Eastern Distributer (which feeds the M5) just down the road from our apartment was closed for construction of the new tunnel, but it still saves a heap of time nonetheless.

We knew we should have had some lunch before we left, but we foolishly decided to chance it and pick something up on the way. I always forget, but real food only appears once you are more than half way to Canberra. Even then it's not real food - Maccas, the Colonel, the King - all awful but all necessary. We stopped at the Jacks at Marulan and ate just a bit as we didn't want to spoil our appetite for dinner at Dave's.

Along the way we remembered we hadn't got our tickets in the $18 million lotto superdraw, so despite saying we'd never go there ever again, we took a detour through Goulburn. What an awful soul-destroying place. I had to stop though and get pictures infront of the giant merino. We thought of heading up to Goulburn Jail and see if there was a statue of a giant crim, but we were already running late so got a motor on.

Dave's instructions on how to get to his place were remarkable - he got it right down to the smallest detail. I'd struggle to explain how to get out of our apartment building let alone guide visitors through the confusing streets around our area, but with Dave's advice we were out the front of his place in no time.

Dave's apartment is pretty cool - across the road from Manuka Oval and the Kingston Hotel (the Kingo), he seems to have assimilated well. His place is a refurbishment with brand-new kitchen and bathroom, air conditioning and his really groovy fridge (with this special finish that doesn't show up hand prints, unlike ours which, well, does). We chatted for a while and watched a bit of the Aussies play India in the World Cup, before our other Canberran friends Michael and Cate popped round for dinner. We yakked for a bit before heading off for a feed in Kingston.

Along the way I did a dumb thing - back at Dave's I had suggested we could eat anything except Indian, as our boys were playing them in the cricket it would be wrong for us to support the opponent - so when the discussion again came back to what would be on the menu I proclaimed (loudly) "anything but Indian". Of course I didn't see the Indian family happen to pass us just as I said that, and I certainly didn't mean to cause any offence.

Anyhoo, we did a lap of the food district at Kingston before settling on Mediterranean fare. Dave bumped into some mates at the restaurant, but we couldn't chat because we had eating to do. The three boys ordered the same (thick steak) which really surprised no-one. The girls had veal, which surprised no-one. I have to say though, that the dinner was delicious. We decided to skip desert which is always upsetting, before we headed off for the local nightclub district.

I'm not old, but I was tired from a big week and so was ready to call it after one drink. We left Dave who had run into more friends (he's bloody popular - he's only been there a few weeks and everyone seems to know who he is), and returned home to relax in front of the cricket.

Looking a little closer on the outside of the box of my brand-new P4 CPU, it says in bold, large letters "This product is intended to be installed by a professional". Whoops I'm screwed. If you are wondering what I plan on putting the CPU into, well WONDER NO MORE! It's going into my brand spanking new Shuttle XPC SB51G, complete with 80GB Hard Drive and 512MB RAM. Lets take a look at the kit:

The brown box it all came in was much larger than expected, but fortunately it contained a smaller, coloured box with the XPC inside. Lets start with the box - an attractive number with this comtemplative zen-type business guy sitting in the background, with his cool XPC sitting in the foreground. Inside the box we have a number of bits and pieces. The Chinese power supply goes in the bin, as will the IDE cable for the hard disk. But I think I'll hang onto the floppy drive and CD cables (at least for now). The kit also came with 2 manuals, a CD and all the screws you need. And of course, we have the case itself.

The last two pictures are the extra bits I needed to make the kit a working computer. The second last one shows the rounded IDE cable, my 512MB stick of RAM, and the new 80GB hard disk. The last picture shows a few bits and pieces that I liberated from dead PCs from work - a CD and a floppy drive. Oh and beer - don't forget the beer.

First things first, lets throw-out those ye-olde flat IDE cables and replace them with some cool round ones I picked up. Why did I choose round IDE cables? Well for starters they look very cool. No, I don't have a window in the side of my case, but I'll know they're in there and that's what counts. Also they'll help improve airflow in such a small case.

There are plenty of websites that show you step-by-step how to build a PC, but I'm not gonna do that cause y'all be writing in to tell me I'm doing it wrong. All up I think it took me around 3 hours, mostly because it was half assembled for shipping and had to be pulled apart and then rebuilt. I ended up fetching my old IDE cable out of the bin, because the XPC has some clips that help you tuck flat IDE cables out of the way and these clips don't fit the round ones. Bugger.

So after a few hours and some hammering, voila - a brand new PC. The thing is so small - in the last photo it is sitting next to a 15" Dell monitor (also liberated from work).

So, anyone looking for a new PC?

Hmmmm, look what I found - just lying in the bottom of a drawer. An Intel Pentium4 2.4GHz CPU with a 533 FSB! I kinda feel obliged to do something with it....... Watch this space!

I woke up early-ish this morning and realised the significance of today's date - 01/02/03. Didn't have anything suitably auspicious planned so Laura and I decided that today would be "pussy-cat and kitten day" and we would try to find some furry neighbourhood friends. We only got as far as the pussy-less Rushcutters Bay park, where I got to watch some schoolboy cricket and feed some gulls bread. We did a bit of walking through Roslyn Gardens but that was about all we did.